Introduction
Archival sources, especially correspondence between officials in the colonies and the metropolis, have long been the mainstay of scholarly research into the history of colonial territories.Footnote 1 Archival sources include reports of commissions of inquiry, annual and quarterly reports on administrative units and departments, intelligence reports, Blue Books, gazettes and gazetteers, Hansard (proceedings of meetings of legislative councils), and official correspondence among colonial officials, known as dispatches. Dispatches, the cream of colonial records, consist of letters and supporting documents, known as enclosures and sub-enclosures. Enclosures and sub-enclosures are numbered and arranged chronologically, and they consist of correspondence, reports, geological surveys, newspaper cuttings, photographs, and samples of exhibits.
Officials make comments (or reply to them) in the margins or at the end of each correspondence, or arrange the comments together in a section at the beginning or end of a file. These notes or comments are known as “minutes,” an invaluable resource that is often ignored or read casually by researchers.Footnote 2 This underutilized resource, the spice of colonial correspondence, is highlighted in this piece for its potential value and optimal utilization by users of colonial archives, and for the light they shed on the world views of career civil servants. This paper, based on colonial-era correspondence in the British archives, explores aspects of imperial policy through the lens of an influential, controversial, and prolific bureaucrat at the Colonial Office (also known as Whitehall, where it was housed in London). It highlights the contribution made by writers of minutes, such as the subject of this piece, to policy formulation, and underscores the importance of context as well as the content of official correspondence in historical research.
Features of Minutes
The Colonial Office was a department of the British government headed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, a Cabinet Minister in charge of Britain’s overseas dependencies. Unlike other members of the Home Civil Service, its staff worked in Whitehall all their lives “on the affairs of remote territories which most of them had never seen, never expected to see and did not particularly want to see.”Footnote 3 In 1925, the Dominions Office was carved out of the Colonial Office to take charge of the self-governing dominions of Australia, Canada, Newfoundland, New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa. The Colonial Office henceforth administered Britain’s colonies, protectorates, protected states and trust territories. The Secretary of State and officials at Whitehall “looked after the London end” while Colonial Governors governed the dependencies.Footnote 4 From 1925, the Colonial Office comprised eight Geographical Divisions, including two each in charge of East and Central Africa, and West Africa, and one General Department.
Officials in Whitehall and the Colonies exchanged correspondence, including minutes, on various subjects. Minutes were occasioned by any matter requiring a policy decision both in the colonies and the Colonial Office.Footnote 5 A superior officer usually solicited comments that would inform his recommendation to higher authority or decision on a proposed policy. A file was usually opened on a subject under consideration and passed from desk to desk either laterally, among officers of coordinate status, or vertically, up the chain of command. Each official commented on behalf of his unit or department, providing facts, analysis, and an informed opinion on the subject. Writers of minutes took their time to reflect on any matter before making a contribution to what often became an in-house debate among advisers. Their views could reflect the interests of their departments or units, their expertise, or professional experience. They also used the medium to disseminate information obtained directly or indirectly from external sources, such as contacts in the business community. Such information, including gossip and rumors, could be anecdotal or tangential.Footnote 6
The minutes varied in length from a sentence to a multiple-page memorandum.Footnote 7 They were either handwritten on the originating correspondence or typewritten on additional pages. The authors identified themselves by appending their signatures, initials, or offices. Minutes could pose a challenge for the modern user of the archives if they were recorded in cursive or illegible handwriting, or were smudged through poor handling or storage. Moreover, some initials are not self-explanatory and the researcher is compelled to cite them as written, with a question mark added to an informed guess.
Minutes covered issues in relations between Whitehall, on the one hand, and colonial governments and the business community, on the other; developments in the colonies; global commercial and political developments; domestic developments in the United Kingdom; and relations with foreign powers in war and peace. They provided information on various subjects, an official’s opinion on a contentious issue, data on local or global trade, fiscal policy, shipping, population and related matters, and comparison based on similar issues within and across colonial and imperial boundaries. From the perspective of British imperial policy, the minutes were in most cases informative, authoritative, perceptive, incisive, and analytical.Footnote 8 Generally, they provided informed opinion on sundry issues, such as evolution of particular policies on political and economic matters (taxation, customs duties, shipping freights, and foreign competition), and local and world market produce prices, often over the long durée. They primarily filled gaps in knowledge, adding breadth and depth, especially for a new Secretary of State.Footnote 9 In all, the minutes were merely advisory but constituted weighty interventions.Footnote 10
The tone of the minutes varied with the issues and circumstances, and the hierarchy of participants in the exchanges. The language, though polite and deferential towards higher authority, could be blunt, trenchant, paternalistic, racist, sarcastic, censorious, opinionated, combative, and condescending, depending on whether the issue pitted one department against another, or pertained to the colonial subjects, the commercial community, foreign powers or a threat to the colonial order, such as currency counterfeiting or produce adulteration. While writers of minutes differed on many issues, they often formed a common front against the idiosyncrasies of particular individuals, business lobbies or unfriendly foreign countries. Some individuals, such as Sir Waley Cohen and Lord Trenchard of the United Africa Company (UAC), were the butt of critical, often sarcastic, comments by Whitehall officials as will be shown in subsequent passages. A significant feature of minutes was that they remained confidential and restricted to a close circle of top officials in Whitehall.
John E. W. Flood: The Man Behind the Minutes
Secretaries of State for the Colonies relied on many advisers, several of whom served across the tenures of different political heads. In addition to formal meetings, they received advice through memoranda and minutes exchanged within and across Divisions in Whitehall. One of the most prolific and influential writers of minutes during the interwar period was J.E.W. Flood, Assistant Under Secretary of State at the Colonial Office.Footnote 11 Not much is available by way of a biography or career profile of Flood, but he was variously described across the interwar decades as “Assistant Secretary, Colonial Office,”Footnote 12 “a Colonial Office mid-level staffer for the West African desk,”Footnote 13 a “veteran of the West African Department,”Footnote 14 an assistant secretary of state for East Africa,Footnote 15 and “Director of Colonial Students.”Footnote 16 His vast and varied experience across both East and West Africa, and the volume of his minutes, make him an interesting subject of scholarly analysis for the light that minutes shed on the process and dynamics of policy making in the Colonial Office during the 1920s and 1930s.
The personality and world view of Flood can be gleaned from a number of secondary sources and official correspondence. Described as “one of the most prejudiced officials in Whitehall,”Footnote 17 he was clearly a conservative depicted as a “senior Dinosaur” by Ralph Furse, a younger rival at the Colonial Office, with whom he had “personal and ideological differences” during the 1920s.Footnote 18 Flood was distrustful of the engagement of anthropologists in colonial administration.Footnote 19 After meeting two anthropologists at Cambridge University in 1920, he minuted as follows: “They seem to attach an altogether undue importance to ethnology [actually, anthropology], in fact, they both are crazy.”Footnote 20 He submitted a withering minute on N.W. Thomas, a controversial colonial anthropologist, in the aftermath of the anti-tax protests in Aba, Eastern Nigeria in 1929, often dubbed the Aba Women’s War:
Mr. Northcote Thomas was a recognised maniac in many ways. He wore sandals, even in [England], lived on vegetables and was generally a rum person. I can quite imagine that the people in Nigeria did not want to have an object like that going about and poking into the private affairs of the native communities, partly because he was calculated to bring a certain amount of discredit upon the white man’s prestige, partly because the old residents felt that from the practical point of view they know a good deal about native habits and organisation.Footnote 21
Flood was also an English bigot who opposed the employment of Irish Free State medical graduates of the Trinity College, Dublin in the colonial service. Arguing that their political loyalties could not be guaranteed, he stated that ‘“the service is better off without them,” not least because they came from a disloyal country, rendering them “totally unsuited for any service under the crown.”Footnote 22 In the same vein, Flood subordinated the private life of the colonial civil servant to imperial service. This accorded with the prevailing ethos of the imperial civil service.Footnote 23 Hence, he opined that “there is no doubt that most young officers would be hampered by wives in their first years.” He asserted that “a lad from 22 to 26 ought not to be thinking of marriage at all as his pay is not enough and his prospects too uncertain.”Footnote 24 Flood’s paternalism was also betrayed in his reference to a young man of 22 to 26 years as a “lad.”
During the inter-war period, Flood offered advice on several issues, which influenced policy towards the colonies, their governors, officials, and subjects.Footnote 25 However, this article is limited in coverage to the crisis of currency counterfeiting and the activities of European commercial firms, two issues of economic and monetary policy in British West Africa which engaged the attention of the Colonial Office. Although other Whitehall officials contributed minutes, our focus shall be on Flood’s flood of minutes during the interwar period. We shall see how and why he commented on the stated economic issues with a mixture of passion and expertise. However, his views were often expressed in trenchant and censorious language.Footnote 26 Flood, a writer noted, expressed his views in “his characteristic tetchy tone.”Footnote 27 Flood’s career and views were set in a wider context of the interwar period and overarching British imperial policy. First, the period was dominated by economic crises climaxed by the Great Depression of 1929—33.Footnote 28 Second, big firms consequently sought to cope with the economic crises by merging with and acquiring smaller firms, and resorting to economic jingoism. Third, the British government adopted economic nationalism (protectionism) in foreign trade and fiscal conservatism (belt tightening) in managing government finances.Footnote 29 Fourth, in the face of economic adversity, some desperate Africans took to currency counterfeiting, which threatened the integrity of the commercial and monetary systems of British West Africa. Finally, all this took place in a social climate of racial paternalism which pervaded the worldviews of British officials at Whitehall and the colonies.
Flood on Currency and Counterfeit Currency
The counterfeiting of colonial currencies engaged colonial governments, especially those of Nigeria and the Gold Coast, and the Colonial Office in the interwar years. One of the countermeasures promoted by the business community, sections of the British press and economists, was the introduction of silver coinage to replace the alloy coins that appeared easily susceptible to forgery. Flood condescendingly dismissed such arguments in a minute to the Secretary of State: “I have seldom seen and heard so much idiocy talked on any subject as on the alloy coins.” He expressed disdain for the “pathetic ignorance” of the likes of the highly regarded Professor Sir Charles William Chadwick Oman, who had written a long letter to The Times of London on the subject arguing that making silver coins 500 fine was debasing the currency of England.Footnote 30
Flood argued professorially that the cheaper the token coins the better they were. “In Jevons’ criteria of coins,” he asserted, “it is nowhere said that the token coin ought to have an intrinsic value.”Footnote 31 Rather, it had to be “hard-wearing, distinctive, acceptable, and not too easy to counterfeit.” He emphasized the need to focus on the profit accruing from the seigniorage, the difference between the face value of alloy coins and their intrinsic value when delivered in West Africa. If the cost of minting the coins was kept low, greater profit would accrue from minting them. Flood stated sarcastically that his own views were “platitudes,” that is, common knowledge to the average person, but they were “not understood by the ‘Bankers,’ by the ‘Chambers of Commerce’ or anybody else except Mr. Baddeley.”Footnote 32 In another intervention, he excoriated the business lobby from The Gambia with a sarcastic comment: “‘merchants’ and ‘bankers’ lust after silver. They don’t know why but they do.”Footnote 33
As a corollary, Flood was unsparing of the colonial establishment, including the judiciary. In a celebrated case, where one T.B. Amissah, a convict in a counterfeiting case in the Gold Coast obtained acquittal on appeal on the basis of a technicality,Footnote 34 Flood could not resist the temptation to crucify the colonial judicial system. “[T]here is, I think,” he stated, “something wrong with the mentality of the West African Court of Criminal Appeal or with the Gold Coast Law on the subject of attempts, or both.” While acknowledging that the colonial courts in the past had proven to be “very sticky in the degree of proof” required in counterfeiting cases, he postulated that “they have been too meticulous in this one.” In short, Flood was unhappy that a convict had taken advantage of loopholes in the system to escape justice. He opined that the courts should have dispensed with technicalities to uphold conviction.Footnote 35 It is significant that a Whitehall colleague shared Flood’s contempt for the colonial judicial system in a supplementary comment: “I gave up understanding the methods & motives of the legal profession long ago.”Footnote 36
It is not clear what expertise Flood had in currency matters. But, as stated above, he obtained professional advice from bankers, traders, and stakeholders in their respective spheres. This explains the authority with which he tackled various interest groups, including colonial governors and the merchants. Hence, on the issue of countering counterfeiting, he took a position on two contentious issues, the return to silver coinage and the addition of a gilt edge to coins. However, his position on silver changed in the course of the inter-war decade.Footnote 37 Whereas he was skeptical in the preceding decade, he supported a return to silver in a minute of November 1936. “I think myself,” he stated, “that we shall have to go back to silver sooner or later. It can’t be done soon, because the Mint is full up with orders that it could not execute an order for the (West African Currency) Board’s £10m or so currency…The conclusion is that the situation is serious but not yet quite desperate.”Footnote 38
On the second issue, he strongly supported the introduction of a security edge coin to tackle counterfeiting in British West Africa.Footnote 39 He had asserted that the “‘security rim’ … will effectively prevent counterfeiting by the use of moulds, which is the favourite method of coiners all over the world. If you try to mould a coin with this rim on it the mould breaks.”Footnote 40 He took the opportunity to attack the business community, as represented by the Joint West Africa Committee (JWAC) of the London, Manchester, and Liverpool Chambers of Commerce.Footnote 41 He dismissed its submission with characteristic vitriol: “The Joint West Africa Committee are, as usual, a bit foolish. They ought to know, in fact they have been told, that the question of dealing with counterfeit coins has been under consideration and they ought to realise that the wit of man is not confined solely to the Committee.”Footnote 42
On the related issue of circulation of currency notes, Flood cited bank managers’ unanimous opposition to the introduction of a five-shilling note. Higher denomination notes (£1 and 10s) had been “merely tolerated – no more – and [did not] … circulate largely among the native population. Hence the steadiness of the amount in circulation (about £¾ million) till the shortage last year.” The 5s note would circulate “a bit in the large towns” and the Europeans “would like it to buy goods in shops, but it would not go at all in the bush.” It was discovered that colonial subjects preferred 1s and 2s notes “because they were used to dealing in those units.” He doubted whether commercial banks and traders were making “any effort” to promote the circulation of currency notes. “They are very conservative,” he opined, “and the trader would rather pile up a hoard of coin so as to be able to beat his rival by paying coin for goods than help to encourage notes of mutual agreement.”Footnote 43
Flood’s minutes on currency and currency counterfeiting appeared to have influenced policy decisions in the Colonial Office. Although the final decisions on these issues were made by successive Secretaries of State in consultation with their advisers at Whitehall and even colonial governors, they largely tallied with recommendations in Flood’s minutes. First, there was no return to silver after the change to alloy coinage in 1920. This was in the face of advice to the contrary by respected specialists, including academics, and business lobbies. Second, the adoption of the security-edge alloy coin in 1938 to counter counterfeiting was another initiative that Flood (and others at Whitehall) canvassed. In all, the Secretary of State’s dispatches generally aligned with the content of minutes by Flood and other advisers.Footnote 44
Flood and the Business Community
Flood had a touchy relationship with the business community. He traded tackles with the JWAC when it clamored for trial by jury in the colonies. If the firms in the business lobby were serious, he opined, they should prove it by releasing their local representatives in the colonies to serve on the juries, which he knew they could not afford to do. “The tendency of the [European] … firms,” he asserted, “is always to govern from this country, and one of their fixed delusions is that the Governor of a Colony stands to the Secretary of State in the same relation as their local clerks do to the Head Office.” Flood stressed that such “delusion needs to be fought.”Footnote 45 On another occasion, when the JWAC requested a meeting with the Colonial Office on unspecified requests relating to the Gold Coast, Flood, remarked as follows: “As usual the Joint West Africa Committee are rather vague as to what exactly they want to talk about and have not given us very much in the way of notice. The only thing to do is … to let them talk.” He anticipated that one of their requests would be the Co-operative Societies Bill which was causing them “much anxiety.” Such anxieties, he opined, were “needless” since “most of the things which they object are common form elsewhere in similar matters.” He expected that the Gold Coast Governor, Sir Ransford Slater, would provide the ammunition to deal with them.Footnote 46
Flood had noted in an earlier minute that the JWAC’s opposition to the Bill was self-serving. The JWAC had couched its opposition in the altruistic garb of defence of public interest. It argued “that it was wrong to use public funds to subsidise a co-operative movement,” and that it amounted to “Government trading in competition with the merchants.” Their “real … fear,” Flood opined, was “that the co-operative societies would begin to deal direct with purchasers in Europe or America, and it would therefore oust the merchants.”Footnote 47 Flood added that the Ordinance in question was based on similar ones “all over the world,” citing the example of Ceylon. He dismissed the points raised in the merchants’ memorandum as being “simply put forward for debating purposes.” Flood’s antipathy towards the JWAC was shared by other officials. In a dismissive comment, a Whitehall official stated that the Committee “has the peculiar impression that it always knows better than the experts; it knew much better than the Consulting Engineers how to drain Bathurst, and now apparently the Mint produces coins expressly designed to help counterfeiters.”Footnote 48
On the issue of competition among commercial firms and the effect of cartelization on African producers, Flood maintained a critical stance towards the European merchants. As the Great Depression intensified and big firms took to squeezing out local and foreign competition, he disagreed with the tactics and rationale of the British firms, who regularly resorted to economic jingoism to attract official support. In 1929, he reported the speculative practices of British firms as follows: “an Agent at Kano, Northern Nigeria walked into the Office of the Niger Company and offered to buy 10,000 tons of groundnuts at a certain price and having got an option on the quantity for three days walked across the road to the office of W.B. McIver and Co, and sold them the same nuts at £2.10/- a ton profit.”Footnote 49 He cited that episode to illustrate the irrational competition, leading to speculation and profiteering by the firms. In the same vein, he also disputed the British merchants’ claim that Syrian competition was unfair and undesirable because it was being promoted by the French with heavy state subsidies. “The fact,” he submitted, “is that the English firm is beginning to ‘feel the drought’ of Syrian competition.”Footnote 50 He praised the “enterprising” Syrians for taking advantage of expansion of markets and the infrastructure that accompanied colonialism to pursue legitimate enterprise, satisfied with even a small profit margin and enduring conditions that their European competitors considered “unacceptable.” The Levantines, he contended, were only interested in making money to retire to their Middle East homeland.
In the face of the deepening economic crisis that culminated in the Great Depression, the UAC attempted to “reorganise” West African trade by cartelizing it under its control. This led to a wide-ranging conflict that pitted the firm against the government, shipping lines and commercial firms. The “great shipping war” that ensued divided officials in London and West Africa.Footnote 51 In this connection, Flood initially supported UAC’s plan but changed his mind as indicated in two minutes. In the first, though he expressed reservations about the proposal to create a mega firm controlled by the UAC, he minuted as follows: “I do not, however think, there is any particular objection to the establishment of this gigantic concern, even though it will to a very large extent monopolise West African trade…. In short, I am inclined to welcome the change, as it may at any rate do a great deal to stabilise things in West Africa, while the overhead charges ought to be considerably reduced.”Footnote 52
But, in a volte face after details of UAC’s plan emerged, Flood, deplored the “uncontrolled competition” that had ruined trade but condemned UAC’s plan to create “an absolute monopoly.” The UAC proposal “would be an unmitigated disaster. … The whole thing [amounts] … to an attempt by the [UAC] … to use the shipping lines (via low preferential freights) as a weapon to crush their competitors. ‘Be mine or I will kill you’ is the cry.”Footnote 53 His subsequent comments on the UAC were no less hostile. The first is worth quoting in full:
[UAC] may do good by reducing competition and in the end be able to pay more reasonable prices to the producer. I would, however, say in the words of Shakespeare, “It is excellent to have a giant’s strength but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant,” and what the UA is trying to do is not to ‘rationalise’ the trade by amicable agreement and extension of its activities, but to bludgeon its competitors out of existence. …I am not at all sure that we could trust UA, either to give a reasonable price to the producer, or to let him have goods at reasonable rates. A matter of danger is the overpowering influence of one big concern in control of the policy of government.Footnote 54
In another minute, he remarked that the UAC had “a favourite hobby” of continuing “to press that the people of the Gold Coast should be put in a dangerous financial position in order to enable [it] … to get a closer stranglehold of products in the Gold Coast.”Footnote 55
Flood punctured UAC’s appeal to economic jingoism when it claimed that if it did not take over, the Germans would exploit competition to stage a comeback after their ouster during the First World War. Flood stated sarcastically that “if the German competition begins to get serious we shall be faced with the beating of the Imperial drum, and demands to know why Germans are allowed to trade in a British Colony and take the bread out of the mouths of deserving Englishmen.” He dismissed UAC’s pseudo economic nationalism as a ploy to “drive the small firms out of business and get a stranglehold on the shipping companies.” Instead of working against British interests, the possible return of the German firms would frustrate UAC’s plans. In any event, a UAC monopoly “would mean the ruin of West Africa, of its people, and its various Governments, until in the end the inevitable ruin of the UAC followed, and it would be better if there were no monopoly.”Footnote 56
Flood gave short shrift to UAC plans to control shipping, trade, and banking. In a lengthy minute, he provided a clinical analysis of the UAC proposal, highlighting how the company masked its self-interest while purporting to be protecting British economic interests.Footnote 57 He described the draft agreement that UAC attempted to foist on shipping and commercial firms in West Africa as “one of the most amazing documents that I have seen for some time” and proceeded to reveal the booby traps hidden in it.Footnote 58 A colleague of his agreed that the draft agreement was indeed “a most amazing document” and feared that it would be “very difficult to prevent Sir R. Waley Cohen becoming a Dictator in West Africa in so far as commercial matters are concerned.”Footnote 59
As indicated above, Flood was a British nationalist who ordinarily supported British Business provided it played by the rules. Yet, he was opposed to the self-serving economic nationalism of British firms which found it convenient to appeal to the home government in foreign markets. A striking example was the crisis faced by British merchants when the American government was considering an import duty on Nigerian palm oil, palm kernels, and palm kernel oil exports to the United States. The Niger Company consequently lobbied for retaliatory tariffs against the United States automobile exports to Nigeria.Footnote 60 Flood provided a reasoned response based on statistics of imports and exports. “These figures though indicating a high proportion of US vehicles,” he explained, “do not show that there is any formidable weapon against the US to be found in taxing their products. In any case there is no doubt about it that the US lorry is a better thing for the roads in the Colonies than the British.” He added that the US was “perfectly entitled to put what tariff it likes on imported goods.”Footnote 61 In a later comment, he concurred with the Board of Trade that retaliating against the US was impracticable. “The idea of Nigeria, or anybody else, producing any kind of effective threats to the USA in regard to anything connected with their tariff,” he asserted, “is very much like attacking an elephant with a pea-shooter.”Footnote 62 That was the end of the matter.
Patriotism did not blind Flood to economic realities, which he acknowledged in issues relating to foreign competition and inter-imperial relations in the colonies. As indicated above, he was pragmatic enough to counsel against challenging American sovereignty over its fiscal policy and to acknowledge the futility of engaging it in a tariff war. He was also objective in acknowledging that American lorries were more suitable for the colonies. In the same vein, he opposed attempts to stop the circulation of French coins in Nigeria. “I have doubts,” he argued, “as to the necessity of stopping French coin in Nigeria. There is a healthy trade in money changing in Sokoto and other border places, and I do not see why it should be handed over to the Banks.”Footnote 63 In a subsequent submission, he opposed “a drastic prohibition of the importation of foreign coin in view of the trade across the Northern frontier of Nigeria.” Alluding to the existence of “a regular business of money changing in Kano, Sokoto and elsewhere,” he pointed out the danger of applying the law against “a French subject who was on his way home after changing his money into French coin.” Equally absurd, in his opinion, was the scenario of making a Nigerian returning to the colony from French territory to obtain permission before bringing in 20 francs.Footnote 64
Flood’s position on the foregoing economic policy issues broadly reflected the dominant conservative views at Whitehall. There was official bias against the overreaching practices of the UAC and the economic jingoism of the British business lobby (JWAC). The decisions of the Secretaries of State on these issues understandably accorded with the minutes submitted by Flood. However, his opposition to the attempt by the UAC to crush competition in British West Africa was also the orthodox position of the dominant faction at Whitehall that the Secretary of State backed.Footnote 65
Conclusion
This paper has demonstrated the value of minutes as an invaluable archival resource in historical research and scholarship. By focusing on the deluge of minutes written by a long serving Colonial Office bureaucrat in the inter-war period, the paper has unveiled the following:
First, official correspondence (dispatches) cannot be fully understood or contextualized without the surrounding minutes which encapsulated advice from senior bureaucrats to the Secretary of State and the colonial governor. In effect, dispatches were largely the distillation of minutes but neither dispatches nor their supporting minutes can be read in isolation of each other without losing context and perspective.
Second, Colonial Office advisors, such as Flood, were well educated and informed, with a grasp of issues across disciplines, such as economics and literature. Flood, for example, often cited authorities such as Shakespeare and Jevons to buttress his submissions, and even took on respected authorities, such as Professor Oman, in stating his position in policy debates.
Third, there were in-house debates and cleavages among advisers, as epitomized by the division over the attempts by the UAC to control West African trade. The division reflected the extent to which the officials interpreted the application of laissez faire ideas to colonial West Africa. However, most officials were critical of the activities of British firms, especially the UAC in commerce and Elder Dempster in shipping in British West Africa.
Finally, the opinions expressed in the minutes revealed the world views, personal biases, and ideological leanings of their writers. Such prejudices were expressed in official language that was often laced with racism, nationalism, sarcasm, and condescension.
In all, contributors of minutes were important to the process of decision making and policy formulation both in Whitehall and the colonies. Although their views were taken into consideration, and often adopted almost wholesale in the dispatches to and from London, the ultimate version of all correspondence was the responsibility of the political head in London and West Africa. Yet, if the quality of government policy reflected the quality of both leadership as well as the in-house advisers, due credit should be given to writers of the minutes that informed decisions, such as J.E.W. Flood. As has been demonstrated in this piece, policy decisions were the products of the individuals involved and the processes leading to them. In effect, it takes a reading of the minutes, such as those produced by Flood, to capture the context and undercurrents of policy in interwar British West Africa. Such insights avert a simplistic reading and interpretation of colonial dispatches, and a superficial understanding of the policy making process in colonial Africa and the policies emanating from such processes.
Flood was a typical old-guard Whitehall bureaucrat, steeped in the culture of imperial officialdom. Yet, for all his abrasiveness, hubris, hectoring style, bigotry, paternalism, and conservatism, Flood was a realist. He stood his ground on contentious issues, but shifted ground in the face of evidence-based realities. He was fiercely independent, taking a position where others waffled or declined an opinion. A gadfly, Flood was a product of his times, which he reflected in his views, and a creature of the imperial civil service, to which he was unwaveringly committed to the end.
